Daisy Miller, Henry James - Carol Ohmann (essay date 1964)
Carol Ohmann (essay date 1964)
SOURCE: "Daisy Miller: A Study of Changing Intentions," in American Literature, Vol. XXXVI, No. 1, March, 1964, pp. 1-11.
[In the following essay, Ohmann analyzes James's portrayal of Daisy Miller, contending that his attitude toward his protagonist changes over the course of the novella.]
Henry James's most popular nouvelle seems to have owed its initial prominence as much to the controversy it provoked as to the artistry it displayed. Daisy Miller caused a bitter dispute in the customarily urbane dining room of Mrs. Lynn Linton; it gave American writers of etiquette a satisfying opportunity to chastise native mothers and daughters (Daisy should have had a chaperone; dear reader, take heed); it brought Henry James himself, while he sat in the confines of a Venetian gondola, a round scolding from a highly articulate woman of the cosmopolitan world. The causes of argument, of course, were the...
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